Escape
by oh yeah
Summary: Tauralmie and Itarilde are young human girls who have escaped from the man who killed their families and made them work for him. They are being hunted down and the only way to safety is North, to Mirkwood. Problem: most elves there don't like humans.


Disclaimer: I don't own anything LoTR.  Don't sue, it's not worth it.  Definitely.  

_Notes: Hello everyone!  I know, I know, I should be working on my other story, but I need a little break to clear my head from writer's block.  A horrible, horrible thing.  Someone save us from the evil writer's block.  Did anyone catch the sarcasm there?_

**                                                                ~Escape~**

                                                               by: oh yeah

Chapter 1

Escape Form a World of Terror 

She clutched at her heart, her chest gasping for breath.  Her head pounded and it hurt to move.  With the chains around her wrists and feet, it made it hard to walk, and exceedingly hard to run.  Her lungs ached for air.  Clean, cool air.  Air that was untouched by man.  

It was sad really.  Here she was, a mortal woman, despising her own race for what they did to her.  How the mighty have fallen.  Just a short while ago- a year to be precise- she would have said that she was proud to call herself of the race of man.  Now, that was no longer true.  

But she didn't have time to dwell on these things.  She had to move, fast.  Faster than she ever had in her life.  Faster than she would have thought possible.  Indeed, it was impossible.  Here she was, a woman carrying another woman, exhausted, and she managed to keep going.  If she had been thinking straight, she would have wondered…

But she wasn't thinking straight, was she?  She really hadn't been for the better part of a year.  All she knew was that if she stopped… Hell would pay.  

With that thought, she tore on, heedless of branches snapping at her face.  It seemed she was mindless of the darkness of the forest around her, mindless of everything except what was behind her.  It was closing in, always getting closer and closer.  Nothing could escape it, though many tried.  

Maybe it was because of the almost lifeless body in her arms that she kept going when all others stopped.  Maybe it was just because of her own strength of mind that she kept going.  She didn't know.  All she knew was that if it caught her, she would never live to see another dawn.  

After many hours of flight, even she, wonder woman though she seemed, could not keep going.  It was in a little clearing that was devoid of any kind of life that she finally stopped.  

And though she herself was dropping with exhaustion, before she thought about herself, she tucked her friend into a small clump of bushes towards one side of the clearing.  She dropped next to the other girl and immediately fell fast asleep.  

**_~Dream~_**

It was cold and dark.  She couldn't see anything except the chains that kept her firmly tied to the walls.  The cold surrounded her, blocking out almost all other feelings.  Except pain.  The pain was always there.  It never seemed to go away.  It may fade with time, but the scars were not only imprinted on her physically, but mentally.  Everytime her eyes closed, there it was.  Memories of days not so long ago.  

_But when she opened her eyes, a large face loomed before her.  She bit back a small cry and the man smirked in satisfaction.  _

_"Scared, huh?" he teased, hoping to elicit a response.  He received none.  She never replied to anything he said.  It may have made it angry, but her pride kept her sane.  Though, it the last few days, she seemed to have lost even that sanity that she most prized.  He took it away.  Eventually, he took everything away.  _

_He always got what he wanted, didn't he?_

_I suppose we all know people like that.  People who, even though they get everything handed to them on a silver platter, still want more.  People who always want more.  Those kind of people ruined her world, her tiny, insignificant world.  They ruined the peace and prosperity that it gave her, and those around her.  It was all brutally ripped away…_

_The man grew angry.  He backhanded her, and the pain woke her up.  It woke her up out of a kind of daze that she always seemed to be in.  He even took that away from her.  Well, not this time.  Not this time…_

~Awakening~ 

She awoke suddenly.  Nothing was moving.  It seemed everything was dead.  Just like herself.  She was dead on the inside.  Just a living, breathing shell of her former self.  Nothing on the inside.  

She couldn't let Itarilde know that that was how she felt.  How she was.  She would be so worried.  Itarilde would do something insane, and then she would have to cover their tracks and have them disappear in the night.  Hopefully, not to be seen again by anyone who had lived in the village.  

Both girls, mere children really, only 17, had been brought up on a small town.  Nothing really ever happened there and there was never any real cause for alarm.  Until Damion came to the village.  

Lord Damion really was his name.  When he arrived, everything they knew crumbled.  He and his small army destroyed the village and made the villagers work as slaves.  Her father had been the leader of the village and Damion killed him right in front of her eyes.  

Her father, though, had been a very smart man.  For instance, he had learned elvish and had named his only daughter Tauralmie.  He knew that trouble had been brewing in the area close to his, so he had sent a messenger to nearby villages, asking for help.  

No one replied.  

As it turns out, Damion intercepted all of those messages before they had a chance to reach anyone.  The village was doomed.  

As slaves, the villagers soon began to die.  After a few months, only a small band were left, small indeed compared to the original numbers.  Tauralmie and her best friend Itarilde were part of the last band of survivors.  

Desperation was great.  Those slaves who had made it so far were not going to last much longer.  And so they all made a desperate escape attempt.  It was brilliant.  Nothing went wrong until the end, when Damion figured out what was going on and slaughtered all of the slaves except for Tauralmie and Itarilde.  

They were the only two who made it out alive.  And so they fled into the forest, chains still around their wrists and ankles, marking them as runaways for the world to see. 

For runaway slaves, life was hard.  The chains were difficult to get rid of.  Impossible actually, unless if you got a blacksmith to help you, and that rarely happened.  All the surrounding land was owned by Lord Damion.  He paid spies and reporters very well…

The only choice for Tauralmie and Itarilde was to go North.  North into Mirkwood, land of the Elves.  


End file.
